In honor of the opening of Pop-Tarts World–mass market pastry retail heaven for those of us who were under the impression that only four or five flavors of Pop-Tarts existed–in Times Square this month, my officemates and I decided to make the mythical Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich.

Thanks to Fresh Direct, we had the followed delivered to our office last Friday morning:

• Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts
• Frosted Strawberry with Sprinkles Pop-Tarts
• Edy’s Grand Vanilla Bean ice cream
• Edy’s Grand Chocolate ice cream
• Edy’s Cookies ‘N Cream ice cream
• Edy’s Grand Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream
• Edy’s Slow-Churned French Silk ice cream (possibly my favourite storeice cream in the world)
• Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra ice cream

And with those ingredients, we made these:

strawberry with vanilla ice cream

brown sugar cinnamon with French Silk ice cream

The impending glee was too much for Chantee to handle,

but our notoriously non-gluttonous German interns Sven and Christoph surprisingly dove right in:

And speaking of diving right in, if you accidentally drop Pop-Tart down your bra, expect this from me:

This is one of those instances where once you have it, you can’t not have it. Like mixing heavy cream into iced coffee, spooning jelly into the center of a zeppole, or deep-frying a Snickers bar, I will forever be disappointed when there’s not a Pop-Tart in my dish of ice cream. The synthetic sugariness of it appeals so much to the truly indulgent part of me, and the lack of utensils needed to eat it appeals to my raised-in-a-barn-ness.

I was in Ohio last weekend and spent much of it with my best friend, who–like me–finds lots of excuses to “cheat” on her low-carb diet. Meaning that whenever I’m in town, we go crazy and eat whatever we want, which is everything from Dairy Queen to Pizza Hut to McDonald’s with a couple of local joints thrown in as long as they’re all as unhealthy as possible. We’ve said 100 times in the past year that we’d love to try “being good” one time when I come home for a visit, but this time we actually meant it.

As luck would have it, the lovely Maria Emmerich posted a recipe for a low-carb version of the famed Hostess Little Debbie Chocolate Cupcake in her blog the very day I came home, and you know we went to town on those things. Here’s our take on her recipe:

Cupcakes:
1/2 cup of blanched almond flour
3 eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon of iodized sea salt
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
1/2 cup of Splenda
4 tablespoons of melted butter

Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Combine the yolks, sweetener, and butter and whisk until well-blended. Combine all of the dry ingredients and blend well. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the whipped whites, then slowly fold in the dry mixture and blend well. Fill the cupcake pan 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 15-18 minutes at 350 degrees F or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Creamy Filling:
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup Splenda

Whip the cream until light and fluffy and add in the sweetener. Place filling in sandwich baggie with one corner snipped off. Scoop a dime-sized hole out of the top of each cupcake, push the snipped corner of the baggie into the hole, and squeeze until the filling rises to the top of the cupcake. (Maria injected hers into side of the cupcakes, so feel free to try both ways and see which gets more filling in.)

Frosting:
50g low-carb chocolate (we used a Lindt 85% Cocoa Bar, but Maria’s, made with a ChocoPerfection bar, turned out much shinier, like the Hostess version)
1 tablespoon heavy cream

Melt the chocolate bar in 10-second intervals in the microwave and add in whipping cream. Once the cupcake is cooled, dip the top of each one in melted chocolate.

Swirly White Topping:
Cream cheese

Add a small amount of cream cheese to another baggie, cut another tiny piece of the corner off, and swirl it onto each cupcake.

Nutritional Info:
297 calories, 6g carbs, 3.5g fiber, 2.5g net carbs
Makes 6 cakes

a cross-sectional view shows how much creamy filling was waiting inside for us

a cup of heavy cream makes a LOT of creamy filling, and you can guess where all of the leftovers went

Tracey and I loved these. A lot of low-carb swaps for common sugary foods are sad approximations that leave you wishing for the real thing, but we didn’t feel a sense of loss while eating these at all. The only problem we had was convincing ourselves not to eat all six in one sitting, and we were rewarded for that the next day with a deliciously hardened chocolate top on the two we saved. If you can double the recipe, I recommend it.

I like ice cream more than any other dessert. I rarely order it in restaurants, because it’s usually not being made in-house, but I lovelovelove to visit ice cream parlors. I wanted to try Sundaes and Cones, I’ll admit, because I read a review that described their scoops as “too big“, and I thought that was idiotic.

I tried the corn and the chocolate-peanut butter flavor and would happily go back for both. I thought the corn could use some of the berry swirl you usually see at other gourmet parlors to sweeten it up a bit more, but someone who likes less-sweet desserts would love this one. And, well, the picture pretty much tells you how chocolatey that chocolate scoop is. Not an ice cream for those afraid of flavor. Not one for those afraid of gluttony, either.

I’ve already told you how much I like the ubiquitous New York black and white cookies. But look what we found at the grocery store!:

It’s a black and white cookie cake! I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as delicious as the cookies, because it’s not like I eat cookies because I like dough; I want icing. And lots of it. So the icing-to-bread ratio had me skeptical.

But no! It’s moist, almost sticky with sugar, with a slight lemony flavor. The fact that the bread is so NOT dry made me feel like maybe I could even eat it (gasp!) without the icing at all. But I obviously wouldn’t, especially since the icing was about twice as thick as it is on a regular black and white cookie.

I bought mine at the Amish Market on 45th Street, but I’ll bet they’re available at the other locations, too, and maybe other places in the city? Let me know if you’ve seen ‘em!

The first time I saw a black and white cookie, it was at my best friend Tracey’s “Seinfeld”-themed bridal shower. Everyone else gushed over the cookies, but I thought they were stupid. The bottom was soft and fluffy like a cake, and if I’m going to eat cake, I want an inch-thick layer of frosting on top; the stuff coating these things was icing, the kind you see on a slice of cinnamon-raisin bread, and I don’t go to bridal showers for bread.

The black and white cookie is native to New York, though, so eventually I had to give in and eat one. My boyfriend and I were at one of the weekly summer street fairs last summer and happened by La Delice Pastry Shop, an 80-year-old bakery in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, with black and white cookies in the window.

Oldschool baker on a skateboard!

Something just . . . took hold of us . . . and we found ourselves being dragged inside to purchase two of the oversized treats. And they were delicious! Like, really, really delicious! It turns out that the cakey cookie part is an invariably moist shortbread and that the vanilla icing forms this sort of crunchy layer to juxtapose the sponge cake. (The chocolate icing doesn’t, for some reason, and I always eat the chocolate first to get rid of it, because the vanilla’s so much better.)

sugar-associated guilt

Since then, we’ve had about a zillion black and white cookies from all over Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I haven’t had one yet that I disliked. Court Pastry Shop in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has the biggest in diameter (like, monstrously huge). Flavors in Battery Park, Manhattan, has the moistest. Crumbs, the mighty cupcake chain, has the thickest (although The Lunch Belle thinks it sucks).

the black and white cookie from Crumbs

I know everyone has strong opinions about black and whites, and I’d love to hear where you buy your favourites. I’d also like to know if you think the vanilla icing is so much better than the chocolate, because it is.

Right before I left for Christmas break, my boyfriend and I watched a Food Network show about a company known for its pre-decorated gingerbread houses, and all we could talk about was how badly we wanted to rip the roof off of one of those things and go to town on it with our teeth.

Well, while we were in an-unnamed-discount-store-that’s-taking-over-the-world in December, my best friend, Tracey, and I spotted shelves loaded with gingerbread house kits for only $10 and decided to go for it, not only to make my boyfriend jealous but as an added benefit.

We imagined how hard it’d be to attach the roof to the sides, to keep ourselves from crushing the soft gingerbread underneath the weight of our decorations. What we didn’t find out until we got back to Tracey’s house and took the thing out of the box was that it was preassembled and hard as a rock. But hey, we’re lazy.

Can you imagine how great it is having the job of putting this thing together? Whoever it is obviously doesn’t have to be concerned with neatness, and I fantasize daily about slopping icing onto giant cookies.

The house came packaged with icing mix, hard candy balls, and spearmint leaves. Tracey added the orange slices because we’re gluttons.

Here’s Tracey making a wreath on the front of the house with the bowl of icing beside her. Mixing the icing powder into water was literally the only thing we had to do before we started decorating. You’ll note the giant K on the side of the roof, which I put there, because I’m narcissistic and also uncreative.

The finished product, with Tracey’s Christmas tree in the background to prove that we actually did do this in December and not just last week. Unless Tracey kept her Christmas tree up until March just in case we ever found a gingerbread house kit on super-clearance, which is quite possible.

Beauty shot! You’ll note the fine reindeer-covered fleece blanket Tracey held up as a backdrop for me.

Tracey posed for this picture in which she was pretending to go at the house with a spoon before we figured out that it required a hammer to actually break through any of the gingerbread.

Hard as it was, though, that shit was 4 realz delicious.

I figured it was too late to post about my first bûche de Noël experience before I left NYC to spend the holidays with my family in Ohio, but since Blondie & Brownie revealed that Financier is still selling them, it looks like I’m good to go.

Being from the Midwest and being very much culturally sheltered, I had no idea what a bûche de Noël was until my office decided on a whim to order a couple of cakes from the downtown Financier Patisserie the week before Christmas. When I called at 3 p.m., the order-taker told me that they were down to a couple of roll cakes, one in white chocolate and one in Grand Marnier. I told her I’d take them, but she kept stressing that these were not normal cakes and kept asking if I was sure I wanted them. I was like, “Lady, cake is cake.”

But no! A traditional bûche de Noël is a French sponge cake rolled up with frosting to resemble a log, complete with buttercream bark, meringue mushrooms, and protruding branches (made of chocolate, in this case). The Grand Marnier version was entirely untraditional, but the mound of berry-flavored mousse was no less delicious.

I usually think Financier’s cakes are too light and fluffy to really count as a decadent dessert (because I’m a glutton), but the yule log was a total exception and one that I’ll look forward to next year. It seems like the woman at Financier shouldn’t have been warning me about the cake but should’ve been asking why I wasn’t buying all three.

Is this something normal, non-Midwestern people often eat for Christmas?

If you, like me, are saddened by your ability to only purchase egg nog one month out of the year, this is your lucky day. After seeing less apathy more cake‘s photo of it on Chains of Love, I decided I probably couldn’t survive the week without tasting Burger King’s new Cupcake Sundae Shake.

I first tried the BK website, which doesn’t list it on the nutritional information with the other desserts. I then called the BK around the corner from my office, which didn’t pick up their phone. Finally, I spoke to a representative at BK headquarters, who helpfully informed me that it’s a national item that should be available at every location.

On Friday afternoon, some brave co-workers and I ventured out to the BK–which I had never been in up to this point but will now be visiting afternoonly–and to my surprise, actually found a whole sign for it showcased on the menu. New York City, unlike cities in my home state of Ohio, doesn’t seem to be a test market for anything, so whenever I hear about something awesome available in other states, I assume I’ll be able to find it in NYC in 6 months to never.

The only sizes were small and medium, which was a huge disappointment, because although I would’ve never ordered the large or extra-large, it’s important to me that gluttony is at my fingertips if I desire it. I requested the medium, but the cashier informed me only a small was available. And then promptly charged me for the medium, anyway.

It turns out that Burger King’s small is everyone else’s large–which I would’ve known was I a dedicated fast food eater like I should be–so it was perfect. The shake was yellow to accentuate the fact that it’s supposed to taste like yellow cake and had what I thought was an undersized dollop of whipped cream and a pathetic smattering of sprinkles on top.

It turns out that the whipped cream is so dense that it actually sinks into the shake. Even I, a person who claims no amount of sweetness is too intense, thought I could’ve been overwhelmed had there been more. It was like icing and was definitely the best part of the dessert.

The shake tasted really familiar to me, but I couldn’t decide why until I told my co-worker Steve that it was “eggy somehow”, and he asked, “Like egg nog?”

OH, CRAP. Life could not get any better.

I know there are a lot of Max Brenner haters out there. I agree that their menu full of quotes from some bald dude likening eating chocolate to lovemaking is pretty laughable (and sorta gross before dinner), and I agree that waiting in line for an hour with all of the tourists sucks when you feel like you should be entitled to special treatment as someone who pays $2,000 in rent to actually live in the city. But I still crave it.

My friend Beth and I ate at the one in Union Square a few weeks ago and were full enough from our large dinner portions that we were unsure we were able to pack in dessert, but dessert is the whole point of Max Brenner, so we decided to share the Gooey Marshmallow Fudge Brownie Fluffernutter Ice Cream Sandwich. Ridiculous name, right? But I guess it’s polite to let your customers know exactly what they’re in for.

The photo doesn’t do it justice, but the description sure does:

Deep chocolate peanut butter ice cream, marshmallow fluff in between the famous Max Brenner “Oh My God” very chocolately soft baked cookie, with extra milk chocolate drizzle. Served with warm peanut butter dip.

That’s right. Peanut butter dip. Not baby poo.

I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get anything but the fondue (served with milk, dark, and white chocolates heated over candles!), but those fudgey cookies can’t be beat. The crunchy crumbles added great texture, and the peanut butter sauce was so good that I cleaned the bowl while Beth was in the restroom. Mwahaha.

At dinner on Thursday night, my dear boyfriend got incredibly sick. Now, I was fairly suspicious that it was just his attempt at keeping me from making any plans with friends for the weekend out of guilt and empathy so we could hole up in his apartment together, but I expressed a workable amount of pity, anyway.

He came home from work on Friday night with a soup container and a bag that he said was full of crackers, so I accepted that his sickness meant I was going to have to forage for my own dinner and went about my business. We made smalltalk about our days, and then he said, “Aren’t you the least bit curious about the food?” I hadn’t been before, but I jumped up and went over to his desk to find that the soup container had the Magnolia Bakery logo imprinted on its top.

It was banana pudding! And the bag of crackers was actually something called a Whoopi Cookie! See, Kamran and I have been around the block when it comes to Magnolia cupcakes, so we’ve been branching out to other treats each time we go there. We’ve been caking it up lately, but the Whoopi Cookie was something I hadn’t seen yet.

It’s two brown sugar cookies with what the menu says is a “dollop” of maple cream cheese icing between ($1.75). A Magnolia Bakery dollop is evidently the size of a small child, because this stuff was hanging off the sides of the cookie to begin with, and more oozed out with every bite. The cookies were soft and chewy, but the icing was the real selling point, and I wasn’t embarrassed to lick it off the paper wrapper when we finished.